Bulk of Olympic Village social-housing units sit empty

Mark Townsend, executive director of PHS Community Services Society, told The Province on March 22, 2011, that his charity would have no problem filling vacant social housing in the old Olympic Village. Townsend is pictured here on the future site of a social housing project on at 590 Alexander in Vancouver on May 25, 2010.Photo by
Ric Ernst

Almost 200 of the 252 Olympic Village social-housing suites owned by the City of Vancouver remain vacant, and critics say the situation is inexcusable given that the Olympics ended more than a year ago.

“They are scrambling to find people to get into the non-market units,” said NPA Coun. Suzanne Anton, the lone opposition member on council. “It was a starry-eyed dream to turn expensive housing into social housing.

“It’s certainly not helping the homeless. A very small number are being helped,” she said.

Mark Townsend, executive director of the PHS Community Services Society, which is experienced at filling low-cost housing, says the units would have been filled by now if PHS was running the show. PHS is a Downtown Eastside powerhouse with $62 million in assets and annual revenues of $19 million.

“With people breathing down our neck for accommodation, why in God’s name are all these places empty?” asked Townsend. “We can fill 80 units in two days.”

The Olympic Village, which has a troubled history, has been slow to fill up with residents and was once dubbed a "ghost town," although sales of private condos have recently picked up substantially.

In 2008, the developer ran short of funds, the housing market collapsed, the city poured in hundreds of millions of dollars and then customers refused to buy the high-priced, eco-friendly units which were marketed post-Olympics.

Last week, 62 owners of condos already bought filed suit demanding their money be returned, alleging that construction was shoddy.

The city’s 252 social-housing units are being managed by the Co-op Housing Federation of B.C., a large organization that manages 5,000 units overall. It signed an agreement in November to operate the units on the city’s behalf.

Co-op executive director Thom Armstrong said the delay in filling the suites may seem like a lengthy period, but it takes time to “bring that much product on stream.”

“It was a question of how soon the market could absorb the new product, as well as getting the buildings up and running. We didn’t want people moving in until the heating system stabilized,” he said.

“Everybody had a bit of a learning curve with the green technology,” he said.

Only about 60 of the units have been occupied. Another 20 have been “spoken for” but are presently unoccupied. About 1,500 people have expressed interest in the units.

Since tenants are needed for both market-value units and non-market units based on peoples’ ability to pay, the varied mix needs to be carefully juggled, Armstrong said.

“It’s quite the jigsaw puzzle,” he said. “There is no ongoing subsidy.”

Recent online ads placed under “athletes village” show a market-priced two-bedroom costing $1,750 per month and a three-bedroom $2,100, but tenants have been slow to sign up.

Mayor Gregor Robertson said the delays and loss of rental income are not just the city’s fault.

He said the province bears responsibility for a five-month period up until September because it refused bids to run the project under a request-for-proposals process. Operations were then turned over to the city.

“The B.C. Housing [provincial] process fell apart and a number of months were lost,” he said.

“It’s definitely going slower than I would like,” he said. “Part of the problem has been finding large families for the units. This isn’t your typical social-housing units for single guys.

“The social housing is filling at rates comparable to market housing. I expect it to be full by summer,” he said.

Robertson said the city is comfortable with the decision to include low-income earners among the high-end private condos.

“This is a commitment the city made to ourselves to have an inclusive housing development.”

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